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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Online File Backup - Business

Businesses need a good disaster recovery plan and in that is data backup. I use this when I was in school to make sure my research papers did not get lost because if I had lost a 25 page research paper it would kill my grade and make me loss a lot of money. So how can a company effectively keep their data backed up at the minimal cost.
There are now many different online backup solutions for businesses and home users out there today. But they all cost different and offer different features. And some do it by strictly amount of space and some do both amount and computers.

Another well known company in my area is Carbonite backup. This is for small businesses if they are dealing with lots of documents or needing lots of space. Their Business plan allows as many computers as they need on the plan starts at $230 a year for 250GB which is by far cheaper per GB than Dropbox is. But their house hold plans limit you to only 1 computer and cost a lot.

The solution I personaly use is an Open source one that comes with Ubuntu called Ubuntu One. They are like dropbox, they give you the first 2 GB free, but they allow as many computers as you need on the plan. You buy size of space type of plans. In comparison to drop box Ubuntu One is half the cost and they are nicer as you can just add 20GB more if you need more and if you need more than 22GB then you can add another 20 GB. They also allow you to buy their MP3's from their store and they don't count it as space against you the same thing that Amazon adopted after they did it and then Apple with their iCloud.

So for a small business that does not need that much space but just enough to backup their small database files, word documents, spreadsheets, and what not the best choice I see for the cheapest price is Ubuntu One not only is it cheaper but your supporting the Open Source community when you do use their service and spreading the knowledge of Ubuntu.

I hope you try out Ubuntu One it is available for Windows and Ubuntu and mobile phones. Hope you go out and start your free 2 GB plan to give it a try. *update*
Ubuntu One now gives you 5 GB free
*update*